The White Company
heap of trifles that you can see for yourselves in yonder corner? They
are from the South French, every one, upon whom I have been making
war. By my hilt! camarades, I think that I may let my plunder speak for
itself.”
“It seems indeed to be a goodly service,” said the tooth-drawer.
“Tete bleu! yes, indeed. Then there is the chance of a ransom. Why, look
you, in the affair at Brignais some four years back, when the companies
slew James of Bourbon, and put his army to the sword, there was scarce a
man of ours who had not count, baron, or knight. Peter Karsdale, who
was but a common country lout newly brought over, with the English fleas
still hopping under his doublet, laid his great hands upon the Sieur
Amaury de Chatonville, who owns half Picardy, and had five thousand
crowns out of him, with his horse and harness. 'Tis true that a French
wench took it all off Peter as quick as the Frenchman paid it; but what
then? By the twang of string! it would be a bad thing if money was not
made to be spent; and how better than on woman--eh, ma belle?”
“It would indeed be a bad thing if we had not our brave archers to bring
wealth and kindly customs into the country,” quoth Dame Eliza, on whom
the soldier's free and open ways had made a deep impression.
“A toi, ma cherie!” said he, with his hand over his heart. “Hola! there
is la petite peeping from behind the door. A toi, aussi, ma petite! Mon
Dieu! but the lass has a good color!”
“There is one thing, fair sir,” said the Cambridge student in his
piping voice, “which I would fain that you would make more clear. As
I understand it, there was peace made at the town of Bretigny some six
years back between our most gracious monarch and the King of the French.
This being so, it seems most passing strange that you should talk so
loudly of war and of companies when there is no quarrel between the
French and us.”
“Meaning that I lie,” said the archer, laying down his knife.
“May heaven forfend!” cried the student hastily. “_Magna est veritas sed
rara_, which means in the Latin tongue that archers are all honorable
men. I come to you seeking knowledge, for it is my trade to learn.”
“I fear that you are yet a 'prentice to that trade,” quoth the soldier;
“for there is no child over the water but could answer what you ask.
Know then that though there may be peace between our own provinces and
the French, yet within the marches of France there is always war, for
the country is much divided against itself, and is furthermore harried
by bands of flayers, skinners, Brabacons, tardvenus, and the rest of
them. When every man's grip is on his neighbor's throat, and every
five-sous-piece of a baron is marching with tuck of drum to fight whom
he will, it would be a strange thing if five hundred brave English boys
could not pick up a living. Now that Sir John Hawkwood hath gone with
the East Anglian lads and the Nottingham woodmen into the service of the
Marquis of Montferrat to fight against the Lord of Milan, there are but
ten score of us left, yet I trust that I may be able to bring some back
with me to fill the ranks of the White Company. By the tooth of Peter!
it would be a bad thing if I could not muster many a Hamptonshire man
who would be ready to strike in under the red flag of St. George, and
the more so if Sir Nigel Loring, of Christchurch, should don hauberk
once more and take the lead of us.”
“Ah, you would indeed be in luck then,” quoth a woodman; “for it is said
that, setting aside the prince, and mayhap good old Sir John Chandos,
there was not in the whole army a man of such tried courage.”
“It is sooth, every word of it,” the archer answered. “I have seen him
with these two eyes in a stricken field, and never did man carry himself
better. Mon Dieu! yes, ye would not credit it to look at him, or to
hearken to his soft voice, but from the sailing from Orwell down to
the foray to Paris, and that is clear twenty years, there was not a
skirmish, onfall, sally, bushment, escalado or battle, but Sir Nigel was
in the heart of it. I go now to Christchurch with a letter to him from
Sir Claude Latour to ask him if he will take the place of Sir John
Hawkwood; and there is the more chance that he will if I bring one or
two likely men at my heels. What say you, woodman: wilt leave the bucks
to loose a shaft at a nobler mark?”
The forester shook his head. “I have wife and child at Emery Down,”
quoth he; “I would not leave them for such a venture.”
“You, then, young sir?” asked the archer.
“Nay, I am a man of peace,” said Alleyne Edricson. “Besides, I have
other work to do.”
“Peste!” growled the soldier, striking his flagon on the board until the
dishes danced again. “What, in the name of the devil, hath come over
the folk? Why sit ye all moping by the fireside, like crows round a dead
horse, when there is man's work to be done within a few short leagues of
ye? Out upon you all, as a set of laggards and hang-backs! By my hilt I
believe that the men of England are all in France already, and that what
is left behind are in sooth the women dressed up in their paltocks and
hosen.”
“Archer,” quoth Hordle John, “you have lied more than once and more than
twice; for which, and also because I see much in you to dislike, I am
sorely tempted to lay you upon your back.”
“By my hilt! then, I have found a man at last!” shouted the bowman.
“And, 'fore God, you are a better man than I take you for if you can lay
me on my back, mon garcon. I have won the ram more times than there are
toes to my feet, and for seven long years I have found no man in the
Company who could make my jerkin dusty.”
“We have had enough bobance and boasting,” said Hordle John, rising and
throwing off his doublet. “I will show you that there are better men
left in England than ever went thieving to France.”
“Pasques Dieu!” cried the archer, loosening his jerkin, and eyeing his
foeman over with the keen glance of one who is a judge of manhood.
“I have only once before seen such a body of a man. By your leave, my
red-headed friend, I should be right sorry to exchange buffets with
you; and I will allow that there is no man in the Company who would
pull against you on a rope; so let that be a salve to your pride. On
the other hand I should judge that you have led a life of ease for some
months back, and that my muscle is harder than your own. I am ready to
wager upon myself against you if you are not afeard.”
“Afeard, thou lurden!” growled big John. “I never saw the face yet of
the man that I was afeard of. Come out, and we shall see who is the
better man.”
“But the wager?”
“I have nought to wager. Come out for the love and the lust of the
thing.”
“Nought to wager!” cried the soldier. “Why, you have that which I covet
above all things. It is that big body of thine that I am after. See,
now, mon garcon. I have a French feather-bed there, which I have been at
pains to keep these years back. I had it at the sacking of Issodun, and
the King himself hath not such a bed. If you throw me, it is thine; but,
if I throw you, then you are under a vow to take bow and bill and hie
with me to France, there to serve in the White Company as long as we be
enrolled.”
“A fair wager!” cried all the travellers, moving back their benches and
trestles, so as to give fair field for the wrestlers.
“Then you may bid farewell to your bed, soldier,” said Hordle John.
“Nay; I shall keep the bed, and I shall have you to France in spite
of your teeth, and you shall live to thank me for it. How shall it be,
then, mon enfant? Collar and elbow, or close-lock, or catch how you
can?”
“To the devil with your tricks,” said John, opening and shutting his
great red hands. “Stand forth, and let me clip thee.”
“Shalt clip me as best you can then,” quoth the archer, moving out into
the open space, and keeping a most wary eye upon his opponent. He had
thrown off his green jerkin, and his chest was covered only by a pink
silk jupon, or undershirt, cut low in the neck and sleeveless. Hordle
John was stripped from his waist upwards, and his huge body, with his
great muscles swelling out like the gnarled roots of an oak, towered
high above the soldier. The other, however, though near a foot shorter,
was a man of great strength; and there was a gloss upon his white skin
which was wanting in the heavier limbs of the renegade monk. He was
quick on his feet, too, and skilled at the game; so that it was clear,
from the poise of head and shine of eye, that he counted the chances to
be in his favor. It would have been hard that night, through the whole
length of England, to set up a finer pair in face of each other.
Big John stood waiting in the centre with a sullen, menacing eye, and
his red hair in a bristle, while the archer paced lightly and swiftly to
the right and the left with crooked knee and hands advanced. Then with a
sudden dash, so swift and fierce that the eye could scarce follow it, he
flew in upon his man and locked his leg round him. It was a grip that,
between men of equal strength, would mean a fall; but Hordle John tore
him off from him as he might a rat, and hurled him across the room, so
that his head cracked up against the wooden wall.
“Ma foi!” cried the bowman, passing his fingers through his curls, “you
were not far from the feather-bed then, mon gar. A little more and this
good hostel would have a new window.”
Nothing daunted, he approached his man once more, but this time with
more caution than before. With a quick feint he threw the other off his
guard, and then, bounding upon him, threw his legs round his waist and
his arms round his bull-neck, in the hope of bearing him to the ground
with the sudden shock. With a bellow of rage, Hordle John squeezed him
limp in his huge arms; and then, picking him up, cast him down upon the
floor with a force which might well have splintered a bone or two,
had not the archer with the most perfect coolness clung to the other's
forearms to break his fall. As it was, he dropped upon his feet and
kept his balance, though it sent a jar through his frame which set every
joint a-creaking. He bounded back from his perilous foeman; but the
other, heated by the bout, rushed madly after him, and so gave the
practised wrestler the very vantage for which he had planned. As big
John flung himself upon him, the archer ducked under the great red hands
that clutched for him, and, catching his man round the thighs, hurled
him over his shoulder--helped as much by his own mad rush as by the
trained strength of the heave. To Alleyne's eye, it was as if John had
taken unto himself wings and flown. As he hurtled through the air, with
giant limbs revolving, the lad's heart was in his mouth; for surely no
man ever yet had such a fall and came scathless out of it. In truth,
hardy as the man was, his neck had been assuredly broken had he not
pitched head first on the very midriff of the drunken artist, who was
slumbering so peacefully in the corner, all unaware of these stirring
doings. The luckless limner, thus suddenly brought out from his dreams,
sat up with a piercing yell, while Hordle John bounded back into the
circle almost as rapidly as he had left it.
“One more fall, by all the saints!” he cried, throwing out his arms.
“Not I,” quoth the archer, pulling on his clothes, “I have come well out
of the business. I would sooner wrestle with the great bear of Navarre.”
“It was a trick,” cried John.
“Aye was it. By my ten finger-bones! it is a trick that will add a
proper man to the ranks of the Company.”
“Oh, for that,” said the other, “I count it not a fly; for I had
promised myself a good hour ago that I should go with thee, since the
life seems to be a goodly and proper one. Yet I would fain have had the
feather-bed.”